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Today I became a Man

And yes, it was painful! The Chinese sayings is “he who has not
climbed the great wall is not a real man!” I had seen pictures so I
knew it was going to be big, but wow! The night before I was laying
awake in pain from my blistered feet throbbing and I contemplated
skipping the group exertions, assuming I would come back another time.
This was our first day off after a 7 day work week/ intense training so
I really would have liked to sleep through the 7 am alarm. I am so glad
I didn’t! I thought I would be smart and take the cable car up and
then walk down, it was the best $7 I ever spent! Especially after the walk
to the entrance was like 15 minutes of sidewalk straight up! The view was
amazing, everywhere you looked was picture-perfect. And yes I went
crazy over board with the photos.
Every gosh I don’t know how far maybe like 3 blocks was an observation
tower, and I would rush to the tower for shade from the blazing sun. It
was no joke 20 degrees cooler inside the tower and a really unique
look. I stood in front of the stone windows for awhile imagining I was
a guard. Well let’s be honest, I will admit I felt like a princess
from a Disney story and had to stop myself from reciting Repunzle. I
brought a notebook thinking I would get inspired and want to write a
song or something, but all that came to me was, “God, I’m hot!” You
would think that walking down would be taking it easy but the steps
were randomly different sizes so its like 5 little tiny steps then one
double that size 2 tiny and a huge step like up to my knee. And no
yellow edge safety paint to make the end of the steps show up. So I
was like a little kid mulling the wall and stopping to compose myself
every two steps. Loosing my footing a few times and looking out at the
endless slope where I would tumble down if I fell. Amy would never have done
it! Lol, love you! Since I opted out of the climb up I ended up by
myself, which I enjoyed, other than having to ask random people to take
my picture every few steps, or try my famous self photography I am so
good at. So a random vender came and grabbed the camera from me after
seeing my 5th self portrait attempt. And she says, “this way, you big
cover wall.” Meaning she could see the great wall around my big head!!
Then she starts telling me there is a face in the mountain with a nose
like mine. And after giving her a dirty look I realized the mountain
peaks in the distance looked like the profile of a man laying down,
including a very pointy one for the nose! Our coordinator’s most
common phrase is, “Oh, China!” very fitting.

Comments

  1. Ms. CossaboonAugust 15, 2010 at 8:37 PM

    I feel much better knowing that I was not the only one worried about plummeting to my death the whole way back down the Wall! <3 you!

    ReplyDelete

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